Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain - New Updated Edition

Paper $40.00ISBN: 9780708326640
Published
November 2013
For sale in North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand only

Raymond Williams (1921–88) was a Welsh, working-class academic writer and novelist, influential in both the creation of cultural studies as an academic subject and in his attempts to democratize access to education. Here Hywel Dix applies Williams’s theory—that literary texts not only reflect what is happening in a society but also cause certain changes to occur—to literature and film produced in the years since Williams’s death, particularly during the years of political devolution in the United Kingdom. Dix explores the ways in which contemporary Welsh and Scottish writing contributes to devolution and how these writers carry out an imaginative critique of the unitary British state.

“Williams could not have a better advocate than Dix, whose careful reading of his work restores one of the most profound thinkers on literature and culture to our view.”

Andrew Milner | New Welsh Review

“Thoroughly researched, politically engaged, lucidly written and often very cleverly argued, this book is an immediately essential addition to the extensive secondary literature on Williams.”

Jeff Wallace, University of South Wales

“In this book, Hywel Dix presents a succession of fresh and surprising insights into the work of Raymond Williams and into theories of post-devolutionary culture. Readable but critically astute and deeply informed, After Raymond Williams promises to reinvigorate the idea of cultural materialism.”

Jane Aaron, University of South Wales

“This innovative and timely study sheds light not only on the work of Raymond Williams, but also on the ongoing cultural processes of devolution in Britain.”

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